In each installment of ThePaSch's Awesome And Insightful Guide To Creating Trials, or TPAAIGTCT for short, we will take a look at specific methods and general hints for various areas regarding the creation of trials that have proven and will prove to be vital to creating a trial that everyone is going to want to play. Helpful screenshots and detailed illustrations, along with in-depth explanations on why and how the given advice will impact your trial in more than one positive way will help you create the trial that you always wanted to create, but never had the guts to.
Part 1: Cross-Examinations and how to pull them off correctly
Cross-examinations are a fundamental part of each and every trial. Naturally, they are highly important to keep the player interested in your trial and to prevent it from going stale and boring the player to death. Because testimonies and cross-examinations will make up the bulk of your trial's storytelling, it is highly advisable to throw them in at any given opportunity. After all, the player is not going to want to listen to your characters figure out the case themselves; they want to be a part of that process, shaping and puzzling together the core facts of the case at hand. On the contrary, long cross-examinations tend to get dull, leaving the player with the sole goal of getting out of it, just to make progress. As such, you will want to pack as much information as possible into as little statements as possible. Luckily, Ace Attorney Online gives us the opportunity to extend the normal textbox size of three lines, making it possible to transcend the original games in ways no one ever thought possible. For instance, compare the information given in this frame of testimony:
to the information given in this frame:
As you can see, the latter variant offers much more in-depth storytelling and characterization in virtually the same space, while still conveying the basic gist of the testimony. This is the advantage to working with an online casemaker - you are not bound by the artificial limitations that the DS versions imposed on themselves. You should make use of that notion whenever possible.
Alternatively, if you - for whatever reason - decide that you indeed
want to impose these trivial limitations on yourself, you can split the message up:
But, for the sake of this guide, we are going to work with the much handier option of keeping the information in one frame. It will also make it easier to convert your testimony into a cross-examination later on. Let's take a look at the witness' full, complete testimony, naturally in the style of shaping your trial's lore while still providing fundamental case information:
Now, with each statement in a testimony comes the necessity of providing a relevant response to the defense's pressing. In general, when the player presses a statement, he or she does so because he or she wants more information about that statement. Keep this in mind as you create your cross-examination - you will want to provide the player with
new information in order to make them feel like they accomplished something and made progress. For instance, when pressing the first statement of our testimony, avoid this:
You will notice that, no matter what response the witness provides to our lawyer for this question, no new information will have been gained in the end. Time is an abstract topic and generally not important in any given situation. Instead, make use of the great amount of information already given by the witness' statement and try to expand upon it. Take this example as a pointer:
Compared to the previous example, no matter what response the witness provies to our lawyer for
this question, he will always acquire new information in the end. To expand upon this scenario, let's assume that a piece of black forest cake is $2,99. Our lawyer might have a great amount of use for this new tidbit of info, so let's add a new statement to the testimony that explains the price further and provides an explanation as to why it may be too high, too low, or just right for the provided service, i.e. a piece of cake. Keep in mind that you absolutely need to pay attention and incorporate your characters' unique quirks, so let's add a reference to our witness' personality, which, in this case, is one of a computer nerd, as his name suggests:
And now, free from limitations, doubts and shallowness of information and facts, create your own cross-examination in this style as a closing excercise for this chapter of TPAAIGTCT. This concludes our first installment! Our topic for the next installment:
The Endless Cross-Examination: Stop Amending Every Tidbit Of Junk, You Dimwit!